Princess Joan

It was my Mom’s birthday and I wanted to surprise her. We had just finished dinner, and I casually leaned toward our Echo and said, “Alexa, open Birthday Story.”

You see, I had just gotten an email from Amazon about “Blueprints” and I couldn’t believe the possibilities. What?? You could make Alexa tell stories? Get her to say anything you wanted just by filling in some boxes? So I used the Fairy Tale template, spun a festive tale, and dubbed my mother, Princess Joan. She loved it.

And we’ve been calling her Princess Joan ever since.

The skill that I’m submitting for feedback is the second version of the Princess Joan story. It has evolved from a fun family birthday gesture into an interactive bedtime story for kids. The narrative has a branching structure, and whichever way you go, it takes about 7-10 minutes to get to the song at the end.

I built it using Voice Apps.

Of course, I ran into a ton of challenges along the way. I have no training in programming. I’m a writer. Functions, variables…yikes! Just learning the basic vocabulary of JavaScript was daunting. But I really enjoyed spending hours on end tinkering with SSML, trying to make Alexa sound like a Valley girl from the 80’s.

So yeah, I was really happy when I finished my skill and sent it out into the world. I know there’s still so much to learn, but hey, I was able to make a talking frog interact with the listener, tell bad jokes in a gruff male voice, and then pause for 0.8 seconds between the setup and the punchline. And for that little merging of fiction and tech, this non-programmer was enormously proud.

What’s next for Princess Joan?

I’m interested in finding new ways to tell stories. I think there is so much potential right now in Voice, and any feedback or suggestions that you could send would be warmly welcomed.

Thanks for reading!